Instagram Introduces 10 New Tools to Inspire Your Creativity

Instagram has changed the way we view the world, ushering in a whole new era of photo sharing that has made us all paparazzi in our own right — stalking down the food on our plate, grabbing the sun’s good side and, yes, doing a lot of the “s” word. Now that you’re comfortable (maybe a little too comfortable) with the app’s simple functions, it’s adding a bunch of brand-new photo-editing tools and updating some you’re already a regular Annie Leibovitz with in the latest update to Instagram 6.0.

Right after Apple announced updates to the Photo app for iOS 8, Instagram is following with their own announcement of ten new features that hope to turn the photo sharing app into a photo editing one, too. Now (post-update!) when you go to select a filter, you’ll spot a new wrench icon. Tap on that and you’ll have access to 10 all-new photo editing tools:

Filter strength (double tap on these to adjust each filter’s strength)

Adjust

Brightness (adjust light)

Contrast

Warmth (enrich the colors in your photo)

Saturation

Highlights

Shadows (adjust darkness)

Vignette (work on the composition of each photo like the true artist you are!)

Sharpen (crisp, clear are no longer problems)

On top of the new features, Instagram updated a slew of its favorites: Straighten, Border, Blur/Tilt Shift, Crop, Lux (which makes your pix more vibrant) and Rotate are better than before, plus the process of uploading videos on iOS has been simplified.

Now what you saw IRL when you snapped the pic, you can make sure looks the same when you post it in YIL (Your Instagram Life). Choosing the right filter was sometimes already time consuming enough. This is going to take some getting used to. The hope is that you’ll be able to skip past your smartphone’s native camera app and all of those photo editing apps that you downloaded and go right from taking the picture to making it look its best for all the world to see. And Like. If Instagram can do the same thing but with photo combining, we would even say goodbye to PicFrame for good. Download (or update) the latest, Instagram 6.0 today for iOS and Android.

What is your go-to photo editing app? Will you update Instagram and skip the rest? Share your thoughts below!